It seems simple to me. Increase the ability of people to earn on here and the masses will flood in. Unfortunately all the changes that we are doing recently are likely going to further decrease people's ability to earn on here.
Though admittedly, I am not sure how you help people earn more while also making things sustainable. Above my pay grade.
Gonna have to develop some other mechanisms other than reward pool. But there are ways.
Also enabling content creators that have already established the ability to motivate and influence "the masses" is more important because not everyone needs to Earn. But yes content creators should have many distinct mechanisms to earn and they should not have an unhealhty dependency on rewards pool... that would be putting all the eggs in one basket and that basket is not gonna sustain a creator that truly has sway. Those creators make tens of thousands of dollars per creation and that's not something for rewards pool. Must look at what mechanisms they're already utilizing.
Ad revenue... if steemit had ad revenue sharing with bloggers, plus they can earn upvotes (which would be akin to tips), we might be able to keep some solid influencers here...